What can films and series in sign languages teach us about deafness and social power? What is the relationship between signed language and cultural identity, and how can the screen convey it in new and empowering ways? Cinema has a long history of effacing the linguistic complexity of sign, of casting hearing actors in deaf roles and of perpetuating tropes of silence as isolation and deafness as tragedy. These patterns were influenced by the broader history of oralism and audism in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, in the past decade, sign language cinema has not only exponentially grown, but it has begun to reflect more authentic Deaf perspectives…
